Ace High: Murder at The Inventory
by MarioMaster2008
Summary: With The Inventory long shut down, the mystery of The Player's death is investigated.
1. Prologue

The place was long deserted after…the incident happened.

"_I don't even think that's a very big bet. I'm just trying to think as hard as my __**seven pack abs!**_"

The tables were overturned. Decks of cards were thrown across the floor. The place was a complete mess.

"_Max has…a pair of sevens!"_

Sonicfiend and Olivia walked into the old, run-down bar.

"_The Heavy has...two pair!"_

The two of them studied the reckless cataclysmic destruction of the speakeasy they now stayed in.

"_Strong Bad has…__**a flush!**_"

They looked at each other and sighed.

"_Tycho has…a pair of nines."_

"It's been quite a while since anyone's come in here. The cops shut this place down back in January." Sonicfiend recalled the information written on the case file back in the office.

"_The Player has…Ace High. Strong Bad wins the hand._"

"I don't think this one's gonna be so easy…" Olivia sighed.

"_All I gots is this…__**WINNING HAND? WOOO! PYSCHE! PHASE!**__"_

Then, someone at the table fired. It was dark outside, so no one could clearly tell who or what they were shooting at. The body fell with a somewhat silenced _thud, _onto The Inventory's carpeted floor. The smoke from the barrel of the gun, heated from the bullet, cleared up.

The Host turned on the light, the lamp switch swaying back and forth as glare from the light hit Strong Bad's _Dangeresue, Too? _sunglasses.

He pointed, as best he could with boxing gloves for hands, at the body of The Player, whom had later been identified as MarioMaster, lying there, without movement, cold as a winter's night.

Everyone was quiet, for they realized what one of them had done. The Player was dead. And soon, one of them would have more on their plate to worry about than the ten thousand dollars they had bought into the game with.

"So, um…who gets his share of the pot?" Max questioned, slightly recovering from the shock.

"Max, don't you see what's happened?" The Host had a hint of fear in his voice, though not so much for MarioMaster as it was envisions of what might happen to The Inventory's reputation. "It just goes to show that _anything _can happen at The Inventory…"

The world was quite different after that. Max, no longer a Freelance Police officer, was reduced to hanging around all day with his friend-for-life, Lorne, and reminiscing about the days he used to spend with Sam, fighting crime. Sometimes even on purpose.

Strong Bad, once known as "The Rambling Wreck of Email Check", had sold off his computer, the top-of-the-line Compy _Compé_, and gotten back into the ring, once again rising as the fabled wrestleman he once was.

The Heavy, no longer content to show his face in public, had permanently gone back to the Dustbowl, battling Scouts and Spies to this day, with no breaks, and no more of his cherished sandwiches.

But it was Tycho who suffered the most terrible fate of all. He, too, sold off his computer—cutting off every social outlet he ever had—and left his job at Penny Arcade. He now lives as a homeless man on a curb, offering a dollar, or best offer, for his most prized possession—his twenty-sided die, and the Dungeons and Dragons account that came with it.

All because of the Murder at The Inventory…


	2. Chapter 1: Know When To Fold Them

"I don't get it, The Cheat." Strong Bad said mournfully to his yellow, spotted companion. The only friend he had left. "I _always _win at poker. And then that one cheater came along—I just—_**hate **_him. _ SO __much! _But at least he got what he had coming to him."

Strong Bad smiled, remembering the hand before the incident occurred.

"_The thing about being known as a sociopath is that you can bet an obscene amount of money, and people will just think you're having an episode." _Max explained to us all. _"I bet."_

Max nonchalantly threw a pile of chips onto the center of the table, without even looking at his cards. Then, he looked at me, smiling his trademarked psychopathic grin. "_You __**have **__to call because you're afraid of what I'll do with the money if you don't._" 

He had guessed correctly. My hands trembling, I called his bet, with my kicker cards of two and four of spades.

"_That's just great. Son of a goddamn lagomorph…_" I said, muttering under my breath.

_"Ha! No way." _Strong Bad folded, and looked at me. _"Hey! Four Eyes!_"

I sighed, but had nothing else to do but sit there and wait. _"What is it?_" I asked, only half caring.

"_Seems like you're the only one here without a gun. Well, except Web Comic over there._" Strong Bad shot a quick glance at Tycho, staring him down with his odd entirely green eyes. "_Aren't you a little…nervous?_"

"_Well, I guess it __**is **__pretty dangerous…_" I started, before being broken off.

"_No—it's pretty—__**Dangeres**__—"_

"_Yeah, so anyway—I guess it __**is **__pretty dangerous being the only one without a gun and only being a table's length from Max."_

"_Tiny Rabbit?_" The Heavy snarled "_**I **__am Heavy Weapons Guy! It costs four hundred thousand dollars to fire my weapon for __**twelve seconds!**_"

"_With table talk like __**that, **__you better wash your hands—'cause I know you're holdin' crap!"_ I said, pushing four thousand dollars worth of chips into the pot. "_I raise._"

"_I don't even think that's a very big bet. I'm just trying to think as hard as my __**seven pack abs!**_" Strong Bad proclaimed, flexing his marker-drawn abs for all to see.

Tycho groaned, and slapped his hand across his forehead. _"I call. __**Anything **__to get me away from Strong Bad."_

"_For __**once, **__we agree on something, Ms. Blogosphere 2004._" Strong Bad did not only call the bet, but threw in four thousand dollars of his own chips in as well—a miniscule fortune—tossed away with one hand.

I gulped, and turned to Max. Maybe the stakes would get _someone _to fold.

"_CALL!_ " Max proclaimed it to the heavens, pushing in his chips as well. "_Ohhh, now __**there's **__the financial recklessness I've missed so much…_"

"_Hmm…_" The Heavy pondered what his next action might be, for a long period of time. But even if he wasn't wearing that Dealor's Visor of his, I doubt he'd be sweating as much as I was. "_I am call._"

"_All in._" Tycho proclaimed proudly, shooting a horrendously evil stare at us all—it looked like something only Max would be capable of, but even _he _was afraid.

At this point, I had the choice of either going all in to match Tycho's bet, or folding and keeping the cash I had, but losing the dignity I had built up.

"_There's __**always **__more money! How often do you get to crush a man's hubris?_" Max said, smiling at me.

"_That's not a bone, Max. It's extreme arrogance."_ I pointed out, looking at what little money I had left, and all the money I _could _win in the pot. "_But I suppose I could—"_

"_You'd know exactly what to do here if you used Strong Bad's Super System for Perfect Pokering! Illegal in forty-two states._" Strong Bad was always one for convenient product placement.

I sighed, annoyed and with no other option now. "_—call._"

As luck had it, everyone else went all in as well, leaving the pot at an even 50 thousand dollars—everyone's money. It all came down to this one hand.

Everyone showed their cards. Tycho had the nine of spades and a jack of clubs. Max had the seven of clubs and a queen of diamonds. The Heavy had the ace of hearts and the king of spades, and Strong Bad had the ten and eight of hearts.

The flop turned over—a seven of hearts, a nine of hearts, and an ace of clubs.

I winced. "_Not exactly what I was hoping for. But it doesn't matter. You can still somehow win this. …somehow." _I thought to myself.

The fourth card turned over—the king of hearts.

"_**Yes!**_" Strong Bad said, holding his arms in the air.

Tycho slammed his fist on the table, while I stared intensely on the row of four cards that laid there. Maybe I could at _least _get a pair…

The river landed on the table. A ten of clubs.

"_**All riiiiiight!**_" Strong Bad smiled again.

"_Aw—fu—_" I started to say in furious rage, but was interrupted by The Host.

"_Max has…a pair of sevens!"_

"_Here we go…_" I thought, adjusting the collar of my shirt.

"_The Heavy has...two pair! Strong Bad has…__**a flush! **__Tycho has…a pair of nines. The Player has…Ace High. Strong Bad wins the hand."_

"_All I gots is this…__**WINNING HAND? WOOO! PYSCHE! PHASE!**__"_

Strong Bad leaped onto the table, and brandished his shovel. He began to shovel up his winnings when someone at the table shot at him. They missed, and hit the lightbulb, blacking the place out. Thinking that this was as good enough a time as any to fire again, in pitch blackness, they fired once more. But they hit someone else.

And now, you are the witness of the Murder at The Inventory…


	3. Chapter 2: The Big Kill

So now it seems we're all up to speed. But The Inventory never recovered from the incident. Once the murder happened, the place's business was severely affected, until it was that no one came there at all.

No one had even bothered to clean up the mess of blood, cards, chips and tables that The Inventory had then become. Months later, Sonicfiend and Olivia walked the scene, hoping to solve the mystery that no one ever could. Or cared to.

"How do you expect us to find things in _this _mess?" Olivia asked, picking up an Ace of Hearts, slightly stained in the top right corner with blood, long dry from the corpse of MarioMaster.

"Well, technically, we'll find _lots _of things here—" Sonicfiend said, walking around as haphazardly as Max normally would "—there's cards here, there's tables, there's—"

"Oh, you know what I mean!" Olivia said, with a hint of annoyance in her voice. "We're _supposed _to be highly untrained detectives! And we can't _be _highly untrained detectives until we—"

Here, she was stopped cold by her own two feet when she tripped over the leg of the RED Team table. As she came to, she noticed something peculiar sitting just to the right of the table.

"Sonicfiend," she said quizzically, walking up to him with the object in hand "What do you think this is?"

The object was a firearm—but not just any firearm—a large-barreled revolver with a nice, clean shine, embroidered with the initials "FP" in fancy handwriting.

"Oh, I know about this gun." Sonicfiend exclaimed "MarioMaster told me about it all the time. That's 'The Big Kill', apparently. FP probably stands for _Freelance Police_, which means it belongs to either Sam or Max. But which one? I could've sworn it belonged to Ma—"

"_NO—_shut up—the fanboys will kill us!" Olivia said, holding her hand out "This is _Sam's _gun. But that doesn't make any sense! Sam wasn't playing poker, just Max was, and even _he _spent the entire police budget."

"Maybe he wasn't playing poker," Sonicfiend began, holding a finger to his chin "But that still doesn't mean he wasn't there to see the incident happen…or perhaps even _cause _it."

Olivia gasped; horrified for a few seconds, then she regained her composure. Sonicfiend still had the finger below his chin.

"…That's not nearly as cool as you think it is." She said. "But you might be right about Sam being the perpetrator here. I searched this place clean, there were no other weapons, and the police reports indicate that the bullet found in MarioMaster's skull don't match The Heavy's custom-diameter bullets."

Sonicfiend unloaded Sam's gun. One bullet was missing. Suddenly, he remembered an object he had placed in his pocket—a bag. And inside this bag, the bullet they had found and removed from MarioMaster's head.

He took out the bag and held it for all to see, even though there was only one of them who hadn't previously seen it.

Olivia gasped, as she recently so often does—for it was a dead on match.


	4. Chapter 3: The Office

The two of them stood, for what _seemed _like nearly two months. Yes…_seemed _like.

"Got any threes?" Olivia asked hopefully.

"Nope." Sonicfiend smiled, but it was a sort of mean-spirited, Grinch-esque smile.

"Darn." Olivia threw one of her cards face down onto the poker table. "I was really hoping for a come-from-behind victory."

She picked up a card—it was the Ace of Hearts that MarioMaster had used before he was shot, the blood stain dryly engraved on its top right corner, as a permanent reminder of what had transpired that faithful night at the formerly thriving poker club.

"Oh, right! _The case!_" Olivia madly scrambled from her chair, and grabbed Sonicfiend from his chair, The Big Kill in her other hand. "_We still have to find out who killed MarioMaster!_"

Olivia pocketed the card as evidence, while Sonicfiend, nearly tripping over every sudden step, never said a word until they reached a long-abandoned building somewhere deep in the bowels of New York City.

"This used to be the office of Sam and Max." Olivia said, looking disappointedly at the state of disrepair the building was currently in.

Not only was the paint now a dull, dry, nearly snot yellow color, parts of it had been chipped off the wall, leaving only worn drywall and bricks that, Olivia thought, could be broken as easily as a knife can cut through butter. The once proudly displayed neon _Sam & Max _logo at the top of the building had its lights turned off a while ago, the M in _Max _flickering on and off occasionally—but it only added to the sad reputation this building now obtained. The steps were dirty, originally thought to be from overuse and neglect to clean them, but there seemed to be fresh mud stains on them. Could someone have been inside recently?

Olivia and Sonicfiend wondered the same thing, and instead of standing around typing this like _I _am, _they _had the confidence to step inside. There, they found, sitting in a room with only one source of light—a swinging light bulb, also occasionally flickering on and off, hanging from where there _used _to be a lampshade—Sam.

"I can't use those two things together." He had kept telling himself, over and over, for hours on end, until the dark turned into light, and vice versa. "I can't shoot _Max! _I don't think those two things will work together. …Nah, I'd better not."

"Poor Sam," Olivia had a tone of sadness and respect for the old dog. She could hardly speak the words she had without crying. "He's stuck in a loop of stock phrases from his old adventure games. They've slowly driven him insane."

"Or perhaps it was Max quitting his job. Either way, we have to interrogate him. Don't you find that a little ironic? People interrogating a cop?" Sonicfiend questioned, taking the revolver from Olivia's trembling hands.

"I'd rather not think about it." Olivia replied. "I don't think I even want to _be _here. But that's the price of the job…"

The two of them walked up to Sam, and Sonicfiend tapped him on the shoulder.

Sam was different now. He'd left his hat at the Statue of Liberty, as he had once before. His coat and tie were tattered and worn, and even though Sam had an entire wardrobe full of duplicates of these things, he had neglected to change into new ones. For as he sat, in his hypnotic trance, repeating lines from adventure games that no one likes to hear, Sonicfiend tapping him on the shoulder was the first interaction with living beings he'd had in months, if not _years._

Sam quickly jumped back, the chair falling backwards with a loud thud that echoed across the former office of the Freelance Police, for it was the only piece of furniture that remained. The office was barren now, with Max gone, and the team broken up. But Sam couldn't bring himself to leave, and had been punctual for work every day since then. Because after that one day, he had never left that spot.

"_Wh—what do you want?_" Sam bellowed nervously. There was sweat barreling down his face, and staining the shoulders of his suit, not that it mattered with the condition the suit was in now. "_Who are you?_"

Sam backed up against a wall of the windowless room, and as the light flickered once again, he could briefly see the faces of the two individuals, just as frightened of the experience as he was, but extending their hands to him nonetheless.

"Take it easy, now." Olivia said gently. "My name is Olivia, and this is Sonicfiend. We're here to ask you a few questions."


	5. Chapter 4: The Interrogation

It had taken them a long while to calm Sam down. Olivia and Sonicfiend had wanted to sit down for the longest time, but couldn't, as Sam was still occupying the single chair in the office, as he had for what was probably years by now. But the two of them were not only extremely terrified to ask him to move, they had better things to attend to.

"Were you there the night of the last poker game played inside The Inventory?" Olivia had asked the poor, trembling dog.

"I—I was." Sam tried his best to recall, not exactly _wanting _to relive the horrific moments of the night Max was taken from the Freelance Police—which had since become the Freelance Police_man_—but he also was scared of what would happen if he didn't comply with what the two new-cops-on-the-block were asking.

"I had a good view of the game from the upper floor of The Inventory. Max had always told me that seven was his lucky number." Sam first recalled the last hand of poker Max would ever play. "I remember his exact words. '_Sam would want me to call this, I'm sure of it. I fold._' He had put his chips in anyway, though. And-and then—"

Here, Sam had nearly broken into tears. It was the first time in what seemed like an eternity that he was forced to tell this story, though he remembered it as if it had just happened the night before.

"Take it easy, Sam. You're doing fine." Olivia offered Sam a tissue and, taking it, he continued with his story.

"But I didn't see the incident happen. Once the betting was over, I had stepped out to get something to eat. You know how much I love those Fudgey Freezes... the greatest combination of ice cream, fudge, and carob balls this side of the Mississippi."

Sam noticed at this point that Olivia was, in fact, holding a block of fudge, wrapped in paper, but slightly ripped open; she had planned to eat it once the interrogation was over.

"_Fudge._" Sam said, in a monotone voice. He was like a zombie as he got out of his chair.

"Uh—okay—" Olivia backed away nervously, hiding the fudge behind her back. "You—you want the fudge? I'll give you the fudge."

She stammered to find an excuse to resume the interrogation as Sam edged closer. He looked like he had no moral qualms whatsoever in shoving her out the five story window to get his hands on her fudge.

"—but—but you have to answer the rest of our questions!" She took the fudge out of her pocket and threw it with remarkably good aim onto the chair that Sam had sat in.

Sam bolted to the chair and ate the fudge as messily and quickly as Olivia had hoped he wouldn't have, for at that moment, she felt that if the feeling in her stomach was any indication, she wouldn't be eating fudge again.

"Well, _that _was horrible." She said, as she tried her best to wipe her slobber-covered sleeve. "Um—how about the rest of that story?"

"Well—" Sam smacked his lips, "Max would always get violently angry when he saw me eating without him. So once I got back with my Fudgey Freeze, he took out his pistol and nearly shot one of the patrons."

"_WAIT._" Olivia held out her hand, "Who did he nearly shoot?"

"I—I don't remember…" Sam strained as hard as he could to remember more about the incident, but it was too late, for Olivia had already ran up to him.

"_DAMN IT, SAM, WE HAVE BEEN AT THIS FOR __**TWELVE HOURS! **__NOW YOU WILL __**TELL US **__WHO MAX NEARLY SHOT OR WE __**WILL **__MURDER—"_

"_Whoa, _whoa! Liv! Calm down!" Sonicfiend, who had been madly scribbling down notes this whole time, nearly had to use the jaws of life to restrain his tempered colleague.

Olivia breathed deeply, and said, in an eerily calm tone, "But—but we're so close…there _has _to be something!"

It was here she remembered she had the Big Kill in her pocket, and the bullet taken from MarioMaster's skull in the other.

"But—this is _your _gun, isn't it?" She held it up for him to see, and Sam immediately recoiled from the mere sight of it.

"Take it away—_take it away! _I don't ever want to see that thing again!" Sam had run to the other side of the room, his back to Olivia and Sonicfiend.

"Why not?" Olivia inquired, cautiously putting the gun back in her pocket.

"If it wasn't for that gun, the poor man who died that day would still be alive."

And it was here that the two of them felt they were closer than they ever were.


	6. Chapter 5: The End

"So what have we got?" Olivia looked over the data she and Sonicfiend had plotted out over the course of the three months it took them to buy all those expensive poster boards they used to put the data on. Detective work isn't cheap.

"Well," Sonicfiend took out a pen, beginning to circle things on the paper. "Sam told us during the interrogation that Max nearly shot 'a patron' of The Inventory during the game, but the bullet found in MarioMaster's skull matches the one in the Big Kill."

"I can't believe it took us three giant poster boards to write all that down." Olivia sighed, looking at the bills, the cost of which was common for this line of work.

"I have extremely large handwriting…" Sonicfiend said, embarrassed. "Anyway, it had to be either Sam or Max. I searched this place clean—and believe me, with all the discarded, decaying nachos in here, that's not easy to do—and I couldn't find a single bullet or remnant of any of their firearms. Besides, isn't Strong Bad's gun just a water pistol with nunchucks on it?"

"_That sounds __**awesome.**_" Olivia was slightly taken aback by this firearm, it sounded like something she'd like to have herself, as a substitute for the revolver Sam never wanted to see again, a horrible reminder to her, as well as Sam himself, of what had happened on that unforgettable night.

"It does, actually. Should we interrogate Max, as well?" Sonicfiend inquired.

"I…" Olivia was terrified, saying the word in almost a whisper, as if she were about to faint. "I don't think we can…"

"Why no—oh…" As Sonicfiend stepped forward, peering over Olivia's shoulder, he too, saw why they couldn't ask the other half of the Freelance Police the many questions they had burning in their minds.

The two of them stared long and hard, mouths agape, at the headline of a dampened newspaper, dated September 7th.

_Rabbit found dead, best friend meeting psychiatrist._

"He's dead…Max is dead…" A tear rolled slowly down Olivia's eye, landing on the paper's jagged edge, not that the liquid damaged the paper any more than it already had.

"But…" Sonicfiend walked closer, and noticed something mysterious about the picture. "…Where's his head?"

It was true, Max's head was absent from the picture—but strangely, everything below the top row of his teeth remained.

"Hmm…but Sam would never do anything like this, even in the state he is now. The two of them would take a bullet for one another if it came to that." Sonicfiend pondered over this, but was interrupted by the sound of footsteps. Someone else was in The Inventory with them.

"Did you say…_take a bullet?_"

The voice the two of them heard behind them had a thick British accent.

"Who might you be?" Olivia asked the man.

He had a red robe and a wood pipe; he looked like a classy man, very conscious of style. But the robe had a few rips in it—not very noticeable, but still big enough to be visible, something a man of his supposed stature would not tolerate under normal circumstances.

"I am legally obligated to call myself The Host." said the man. "As you may or may not have guessed by now, I was the one running the show during that horrible event. And…"

"And?" Olivia stepped closer, her eyebrows narrowing.

"…I shot someone that night. He looked young and full of confidence, but not as much as that Strong Bad fellow."

"_You _shot MarioMaster?" Sonicfiend stepped closer too at this point. "Why would _you _shoot anyone, or even bring a firearm in here? Aren't you supposed to be the unbiased one, who periodically raises the blinds to make more of a profit?"

"Ordinarily, this would have been true." The Host admitted, "But despite my vow to remain impartial, I just didn't feel safe with Max even a room's length away from me."

"I don't blame you there—" Sonicfiend said, taking a punch to the shoulder from Olivia that had more than a little force behind it. "_What? _Have you _seen _where he puts that gun?"

"Regardless, I've always had a revolver handy, after The Spy gave it to me as a buy-in." The Host showed the two of them the revolver, which it had been rumored, used the same bullets as the Big Kill.

"But why would you make us try to go after Sam?" Olivia questioned, finally relieved that this case was coming to a close.

"I didn't make you go after Sam, young lady. You two are just terrible at being undercover officers."

"I see where you may have gotten that—" Sonicfiend said, taking another punch from Olivia with significantly _more _force behind it, if that was even possible. "_Ow, _it's bruising now. Look—look what you've done. My poor shoulder."

As Sonicfiend pouted like a child, Olivia continued the interrogation.

"What about _**Max's Head?**_" It seemed like her face actually got _red _with rage at this point, her eyebrows squinted, absolutely willing to _murder _this man, regardless of what his answer to this question would have been.

"It's in the back, in a hidden room next to my office." The Host showed the two of them a picture of the head, resting atop a safe in a back room. "It was the only way to _truly _be rid of that terrifying lagomorph."

"You're lucky I'm bound by the force to have suspects turned in alive…" Olivia told The Host, as she handcuffed him, taking the revolver. "We'll have to take you in for more questions," she told him. "You'll like Seth. He's even crazier than _we _are."

She smiled as she walked him to the car, Sonicfiend following, with his lower lip still stuck out, as it would be for entire hours after that.

The car drove away, in the drizzling rain, sirens blaring. One light flickered on and off in The Inventory, as the taps dripped the last amount of beer the place would ever serve. It was home to a poker game that changed everything in many people's lives.

And now, you've read the tale of The Murder at the Inventory.


End file.
